


Mad as Birds

by inlovewithnight



Category: DCU
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-10
Updated: 2010-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-07 04:11:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	Mad as Birds

The trouble with being in possession of my own mind, ceaselessly unquiet as I have trained it to be, is that even when I have decided a situation is closed, hopeless, written off as concluded and for no further consideration, the possibility remains that a plan will emerge to resolve it more optimally.

That is to say, I declared fairly forcefully that dead he was and dead he would remain, with the relict haunting the city no more and no less than another criminal to be disposed of. Which declaration did absolutely nothing to stop the idea that hit me while I was deep in the heat of patrol, sending my fingers slipping from a ledge and nearly ending my career on the spot. Typical of thoughts that originated from him, before and now and for as long as I can imagine this can continue.

My resolve did nothing to stop the thought, or the plan that grew out of it, spreading and blooming and choking off my rationality like one of Ivy's vines. And because I have further trained myself to know a good plan from a bad one, there was very little choice left but to carry this one forward, difficult and intricate and infuriatingly _humbling_ as it would be.  
**  
"Man. All the best parties start this way."

He talks; he's always talked, up one thread of meaning and down another, cut crosswise with laughter and asides and flares of temper or melancholy. In outline that's still the same, but now the flares are better classed as oil fires, explosions of rage and giddiness and despair that lash out as if to cut the throat of a listener. A watcher.

To be perfectly blunt: me.

"Behind bars, well, they always said I'd end up this way."

He runs the flat of his hand along the bars of the holding cell (not welded, but formed solid, no weak points to exploit; the mold alone cost the entire year's profits of a small holding company in Taipei, but worth it, necessary), laughing jagged-sharp and bright over the dull sound it makes.

"So much for all your saving, huh, Bruce? So much for _that_."  
**  
Across the rooftops and down the alleys, just like always. It could have been any of a hundred thousand chases over the years, and my vision blurs for a moment, my mind faltering. Which one is this, anyway? Am I pursuing or pursued? Who is the target, nothing more than a flash of color and motion just barely out of range—human, metahuman, monster, machine?

And who is my partner, an equal flash of uncertainty at my right hand? Which face will I see if I turn my head, which name must I call to find an answer?

There's no time to test, no time for anything but following the flash of target--_red hood, black leather, Red Hood, **Jason**_\--around another corner, and up another wall, and crashing through a window into darkness.

But when I land and roll and come up scanning my surroundings, the hand that brushes my shoulder in reassurance and the feather-light touch of a recognition signal is Dick's, and somehow I knew it would be.  
**  
"Am I gonna stand trial? You gonna put me in Arkham?"

He does handstands, sometimes for thirty minutes or more, rocking back and forth on his palms and drumming his fingers against the floor just to show his ease. I taught him that, once, the assurance in his body that allows this, though he learned it all over again elsewhere, later, after. I don't know who taught him then.

"I've _been_ to Arkham, you know. I used to go stand outside the gates, look in, try to catch a glimpse of the freaks. Even after I started helping you put 'em in there, I'd still go look sometimes. Laugh at 'em a little. God, that pisses them off. The guards, too, just for the record."

Backflip, easily, back onto his feet, and there was a quarter-rotation of his left knee in that which was unnecessary, a waste of energy, sloppy. Not telling him so requires me to bite my tongue and turn a page of the file I'm reading without seeing a word.

"Actually, I've been by there lately, too. Go right up to the walls. Up the walls, sit on the top, watch for a while."

If I look up from the page, he will be pressed up to the bars, watching me, perhaps reaching through. It is an act, a play at a need that no longer exists, as much as the sudden softness in his voice is a lie.

"Wonder if it wouldn't be better for everyone if I just went in and put myself away. Wonder if that would make you proud."

I look up, a fraction of a second of weakness. His eyes glitter. He smiles at me, before I look away, and then his hands strike the bars again like war drums.  
**  
The fight goes as they do when all three involved know each other's moves like their own breath. I could count off the pulse beating in Dick's neck, or Jason's, as easily as I can feel the blood sliding under my own skin.

"Batman and Nightwing, to what _do_ I owe the honor," he crows, leaping away and going for his gun (always with guns, now, the most blatant of his rejections). "The most _singular_ honor of an obvious trap and a really bad fight and--"

Dick falls back, precisely as planned; Dick is, as ever, a good soldier, and I thank him for that, in the sliver of my mind that is free from all this, the part that oversees the rest and observes with mild pride our smooth transition into phase two.

"What's the matter, Richard, you don't want to play? Oh, I _can_ call you Richard, can't I, or are we playing secret identities right now, and do I get to be a Green Lantern, just for today?"

Dick smiles slightly, a half-curve of a smile beneath his mask, unnecessary but acceptable as he activates the remote control on his belt and the back wall of the building falls away.

Jason jumps, flying and falling like a bird made of stone, and then he _stops_, caught in midair and screaming with what might be rage, or amazement, or laughter. It all fades into a ringing in my ears as I watch, and Clark wraps his arms around Jason tighter, all of Red Hood's violence and rage no more than raindrops on his skin.  
**  
"Must be driving you _crazy_, isn't it?"

No more than anything else, Jay, no more than any of the things I've done.

"You had to call in fucking _Superman_ to stop me."

That's pride, there, no question now; he's halfway to the ceiling, feet braced between the bars, holding himself up with pressure and tension that makes the muscles of his thighs quake.

"Couldn't do it yourself, not even you and Dickiebird together, you had to call in _goddamn Superman_. You can't _stand_ that I'm that good."

Best if he not know about phase three, kept in the back pocket just in case, Ollie and Mia on rooftops with arrows nocked and waiting.

"What did it cost you, huh? What did you have to give to get old Clarkie boy to agree to join this circus?"

An understanding smile, a clap on the arm, soft Kansas voice murmuring about love and belief and family. More than I could ever put into words, Jay.  
**  
Clark and Ollie and Mia all offer to stay, even to call in Roy or any of the others to help out, to take shifts observing and guarding and keeping him locked away until the final phase is ready.

I hold fast and eventually they leave, declaring loudly that they don't understand my stubbornness, my snobbery, my refusal to be other than what and who I have made myself to be. They never will understand, and that is acceptable. Unalterable, at any rate.

Dick stays, and Alfred, to assist and wait with me. They speak little, and I less than that. The stillness of the cave goes largely undisturbed, as is right.

Much as I disliked the term when it came from Clark, this is indeed a time only for family.  
**  
"I know why the caged Robin _sings_\--"

He cuts off, on his feet and alert and watching as Dick and I approach the cell.

"What do we have here, boys and girls? And by girls, I mean you, of course, Dick."

Dick smiles again, faintly, and offers me my mask. It took him weeks of scouring the streets to find the canister in his other hand. Supposedly it was all gone, after Cassandra and I shut the drug ring down. The scourge of Soul, in theory, had ended.

In reality, it had just gone underground, as ever. Nothing ever really dies in Gotham, good or evil.

"What's that? What are you two up to? Sons of…what _is_ that?"

I remember falling through the water with Cass. I remember my heart pounding, and my mind spinning, and her hand settling flat and solid against the symbol of the bat, and the sense of _rightness_ there. I remember being filled with the purpose that I had made of myself.

Dick and I settle our masks, and I take the canister from his hand. It reveals your true self, they say. Cuts you to the essence and exposes it to the eyes of the world. I can only hope that that will be enough to settle, once and for all, the question of what is left here.

When the Soul takes effect, will Jason Todd look back at me with the almost-innocent eyes of Robin, or the twisted-beyond-redemption pain and anger of Red Hood?

Or will they be the eyes of a corpse, holding nothing at all?

I release the drug into the air, and wait.


End file.
